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The tablet market is still doomed, but bizarrely Microsoft is the closest to saving it

Wired has an interesting article on the tablet market, noting that the market has now been shrinking for nearly as much time as it has been growing. Sales peaked in 2014 with 250 million tablets shipped worldwide, and the market has been shrinking for the last 16 quarters and is likely to generate as much revenue this year as seven years ago. “At the end of this year we’ll see revenue numbers that are equivalent to 2011,” says Tom Morrod, senior research director at IHS Markit. Part of the problem is that for most tablet owners, there’s not really a compelling reason to upgrade. “The trend is that tablet users were not really renewing their device,” says Daniel Goncalves, a senior research analyst at IDC. “The device they had was good enough for their daily needs – streaming, video, and television.” The product is being squeezed between ever larger phones and thinner and lighter, more portable PCs. “It’s not a well-defined category,” says Morrod. “Because of that, it’s been encroached upon by other markets. There’s not much left in the middle.” Companies have fled to the higher-end productivity part of the market, which has held steady, but analysts still feel growth there is impeded by the limited functionality of tablets, due to imprecise input options. They note that although the iPad Pro might technically be as powerful as a laptop, its design and user interface acts as a handbrake. Further details posted on OUR FORUM.